By Carole Reedy
“It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion
The quotation above accurately describes how the press exposed the abuses of the Porfirio Díaz government (1876-1910), leading eventually to its decline and the establishment of a new democratic Mexico. The journalists and newspapers of that era have been described as the “true authors” of the Mexican Revolution.
It was not a short journey. The Revolution and struggle for power lasted for ten years, and the repercussions and discontent in the country lasted even longer.
The seeds of revolution were planted by the press and the Flores Magón brothers, as well as by other journalists and periodicals of the era beginning in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
REGENERATION, A NEWSPAPER
The newspaper was the creation of the Flores Magón brothers – Enrique, Jesús, and Ricardo – lawyers by day and journalists by night. It called for a return to the principles of Mexico’s 1857 constitution: free elections, free press, and term limits, all of which had been conveniently forgotten during the 30-year reign of President Porfirio Díaz.
They called the Díaz administration a “den of thieves,” thieves of land, wages, life, and democracy. On August 7, 1900, Antonio Horcasitas and the Flores Magón brothers published the first issue of Regeneration.
Ricardo Flores once said: “Paper is an idol to me, and I think that will soon be my great weapon.”
The mission of Regeneration was “to seek remedies and, where necessary, to point out and denounce all of the misdeeds of public officers who do not follow the precepts of the law, so that public shame brings upon them the justice they deserve.” The focus of most of the articles centered on misconduct of the police, lawyers, and judges.
Porfirio Díaz was not always a despot. In 1857 he supported the principles of the new Mexican constitution and those of Benito Juárez. But once he gained the power of the presidency in 1876, Díaz gradually became authoritarian, favoring land grabbing by rich (often foreign) land owners and industrialists. He was never criticized by the press. Regeneration even accused him of “muzzling the press.”
In 1904 Regeneration and the Flores Magón brothers were forced to leave Mexico for fear of arrest for their radical views. They fled north of the border, where they continued to publish their paper in various US cities, smuggling copies back to Mexico weekly to their 26,000 loyal readers. “Tyranny has thrown us out of our country, forcing us to seek liberty on foreign soil.”
During their exile in the US, political differences deepened among the brothers. Jesús split from Ricardo and Enrique, who had adopted anarchist ideas. Jesús returned to Mexico in 1910 to edit – along with Antonio I. Villarreal – a moderate version of the newspaper Regeneración in Mexico City. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, brothers Enrique and Ricardo continued to publish their radical version.
The story doesn’t end here, however. For the complete telling, do read Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández (2023), an excellent rendering of and resource on the Mexican Revolution and the Magonistas, named one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and winner of the Bancroft Prize.
VESPER AND FIAT LUX, AND OTHERS
Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza, known as “The Progresista,” was one of the most prominent woman activists pushing for change during the Mexican Revolution. She authored both feminist and radical political literature for 45 years.
In 1901, she became the first woman to publish and edit a periodical that decried the abuses of the government of Porfirio Díaz, along with his legislators and judges, as well as the powers of the church and the state. She has been called “our Joan of Arc,” and the Flores Magón brothers in their newspaper Regeneración supported her journalistic work calling for freedom for all people.
Gutiérrez de Mendoza was constantly imprisoned by Díaz for her stances, but she kept on fighting for the workers, being a particular supporter of Emiliano Zapata and his causes, among them The Plan de Ayala. Her publications were shut down nearly 40 times by the government, eventually leading her to do as the Flores Magón brothers had and move her operation north of the border. She eventually returned to Mexico and continued to pursue her convictions.
Gutiérrez de Mendoza also wrote with and for other women, some of whom she met in prison. Many of her articles centered on the mistreatment by the church and state of the indigenous population in Mexico. Mistreatment of miners was another of her principal concerns. ¡Por la Tierra, Por la Raza! (For the Earth, For the Race! 1924) is one of her more popular and significant publications.
Some of the women Gutiérrez met in prison became her partners in publishing. One of these was Dolores Jiménez y Muro, from Aguascalientes, a former teacher and writer in rural Mexico. In 1902 Jiménez moved to Mexico City, where she wrote and published articles against the Díaz regime. She was promptly arrested and imprisoned, but that didn’t halt her radical activities. Gutiérrez and Jiménez, along with other women prisoners, published a radical journal Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light). Jiménez also joined the staff of another leftist periodical, La Mujer Mexicana.
Elisa Acuña Rossetti, one of their associates from prison, also had been a rural teacher in Hidalgo. She worked with the Flores Magón brothers on the newspaper El Hijo de Ahuizote in Mexico City and co-founded and wrote in Vesper and Fiat Lux.
EL HIJO DE AHUIZOTE
This is one of the most critical publications regarding the reign of Porfirio Díaz. It first appeared in 1885 and was packed with political cartoons and satirical writings. In 1903 the paper reported “La Constitución ha muerto” (The Constitution has died).
Ahuizote is derived from a Nahuatl word for an otter or water dog, an animal that takes its place in Mexican mythology. “Ahuízot a(tl),”means water, and “huiz(tli),” means thorn – it is often translated as “the annoying one,” and hijo (son) of the ahuizote would be a pain.
Started by Daniel Cabrera, Manuel Pérez Bibbins, and Juan Sarabia, the periodical was taken over in 1902 by our old friends Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón. The Díaz administration promptly shut down the operation, seizing the equipment and arresting the Flores Magón brothers. It would not be their first or last arrest.
To learn even more about the Mexican Revolution and the men and women behind it, I suggest on your next visit to Mexico City that you visit the National Museum of the Revolution, located in the National Monument of the Revolution.
It’s conveniently located just one Metrobus stop north of Paseo de la Reforma on Avenida Insurgentes. There you’ll find a stunning building with an elevator to take you to the top for a spectacular overall view of the city. On a lower floor is the Museum of the Revolution, where a basic timeline helps you understand, in a clear format, the series of events that led up to and occurred during and after the Revolution. This is essential to understanding present-day Mexico.
There you will also find more extensive information about the people and periodicals from this article.